Real Men Take Care of Their Children

01:33 pm - Writer's Block: "Seeing Stars"

retro_rider55

Current Mood: nostalgic

01:29 pm - Monday Morning Video #22: "Sweeney Floyd: The Dim-Wit Barber of Mayberry"

This is the Monday Morning Video, twenty-second in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

It was difficult to find something Halloweenish which wasn't too gross and/or scary for my own tender sensibilities, yet fit the Holiday theme and still was funny, so it was either this or fifteen minutes (not funny but nonetheless magnificent minutes) of Vincent Price performing a one-man show of "The Cask of Amontillado", which I will save perhaps for Poe's birthday next October. In the meantime...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk4i7OKWSJw

By the way, with regard to the title and some of the verses, while Floyd was always intended to be a little slow on the pickup (although not to the level of the Pyle brothers), actor Howard McNear did actually have a stroke during the course of the series, which affected his speech, slowed his ability to react to other actors, and required him to spend most of his time in a chair. In a remarkable act of decency, Andy Griffith and Executive Producer Sheldon Leonard kept him working on the show, enabling him to keep his dignity. He never was a dimwit, and I think the video maker put that in just to keep the title rhythmically similar to the original, as Floyd was certainly never hard-hearted or ill-tempered in any way that even satirically he could be called a "demon barber".

Current Mood: mischievous

11:25 am - Monday Morning Video #21: "Internet Killed the Video Star"

This is the Monday Morning Video, twenty-first in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Being from 2000, this is already dated in a few ways (most obviously the failure to predict flatscreen monitors becoming common) but it still holds up in most others.

Note that two of the boxes of discards in the closet are labled "Commodore Amiga" and "Apple IIgs", two innovative personal computer technologies which didn't survive the Attack of the Marketing Departments. To this day, bit for bit, the most fun sustained computing experiences I've ever had were with my Apple IIgs. I guess as with your first Doctor or your first starship command, as it were, your first computer remains the one you love best.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiB0VgOKojg

Current Mood: geeky

11:03 am - Monday Morning Video #20: Why There Will Never Be a Universal Translator

This is the Monday Morning Video, twentieth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

This is why Star Trek's Universal Translator for non-Human languages will never happen...

...because this can occur with a language we already understand.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ_mlwnAmr0

Current Mood: misunderstood

12:38 pm - Love Begets Love

Love repaid with love, thirty years later.

Current Mood: impressed

07:00 am - Monday Morning Video #19: (reprise) "Surprise!"

This is the Monday Morning Video, nineteenth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Actually, this is a re-run of a video I used during SpaceWeek, back on Wednesday, July 15th, the reason being that yesterday was the 52nd Anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the Space Race.

"Surprise!", lyrics and music by Leslie Fish



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-mZ9pKvCmk

Current Mood: sleepy

03:52 pm - Monday Morning Video #18: Engage, You're Adorable

This is the Monday Morning Video, eighteenth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

I'm late today because Kevin is home with influenza. His pediatrician is swamped -- maybe I can get him in to see her tomorrow if I call when they open at 8 a.m., but no Tamiflu prescription without an office visit. In the meantime he's getting acetaminophen, loratadine-d, and vitamin C (we're out of zinc until Wednesday night) and being urged to drink as much water as he can.

Anyway, this was probably the only Starfleet bridge set ever built which was large enough to dance upon.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjNKyoRudOQ

Current Mood: busy

04:58 am - On the Topic of Early Rising

There's a story in The Making of STAR TREK of how, during a difficult time during the first season, two key production people arrived at work early in an attempt to catch up on the work at which they were so desperately behind, at 4 a.m., to find that Bob Justman had arrived at work at 3 a.m. and left memos for both of them:

Gentlemen:

I intend to be very mean today.

Regards,
Bob

Current Mood: grumpy

06:01 am - Monday Morning Video #17: Space: 2261

This is the Monday Morning Video, seventeenth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

You may remember a couple of weeks ago I showed you the opening title sequence for Star Trek: Deep Space Five. In a similar vein, here is the opening title sequence for an episode of Space: 2261.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sut9OJwWr-Y

Current Mood: geeky

04:51 pm - More about Larry Gelbart

Last week I mentioned the death of Larry Gelbart, an event which saddened me greatly. I have my own personal story to tell about him which I'd almost forgotten.

When I was seventeen, I had notions of someday becoming a writer for television, and I liked this new show, M*A*S*H, so I sent a letter to the studio, 20th Century-Fox, asking if there were a Writer's Guide, knowing there had been one for the show which first gave me the notion that I'd like to try writing for t.v., Star Trek.

I received a personal letter from Larry Gelbart, saying no, there was no Writer's Guide, but enclosed was a copy of the script for the pilot episode of M*A*S*H, and he looked forward to seeing any submission I wanted to send.

My attempts at story outlines were so miserable that I never tried to subject an agent to the torture of reading them, much less Mr. Gelbart. Then while I was away on a trip, my grandmother threw out the script and my story attempts during housecleaning.

I had almost forgotten the whole incident, not thinking about it in literally decades, until Ken Levine mentioned how Mr. Gelbart never let a call or letter go unanswered and reminded me. I can testify to the truth of it.

Writer after writer and actor after actor have all talked about how encouraging, enthusiastic, and just plain decent Larry Gelbart was, and he really was, even to an unknown kid from St. Louis.

Current Mood: contemplative

10:57 am - America's Most Wanted Widget

America's Most Wanted widget:



Given that John Walsh is this universe's closest approximation of the Batman (he turned to crimefighting due to family tragedy, and as in the comics with the Dark Knight, people have been known to turn themselves in when he focuses on them, due to the inevitability of their capture), it seems appropriate to use this here.

03:09 pm - It's Good to Have Friends

I just got off the telephone, having had a wonderful conversation with roadskoller. I love that whole family: her, her husband Stan, her son skunklover, her sisters cynnerth and bagelgirl, Cyn's husband low_delta, the women's mother emschin, and Cyn's daughter sweetinsanity as well as her incredibly smart and able son. Every one of them is a gem, just some of the finest people I've ever had the pleasure to know.

I've known cynnerth for ten years now, predating either of us having LiveJournal accounts. I'm so glad I left that supportive message in her website guestbook after a crude jerk had flamed her because he didn't like her attitude about a political issue, while websurfing in the college library all those years ago.

Milwaukee's Finest isn't a beer, or the city's police force, it's this family. I am honored by their friendship.

Current Mood: happy

05:13 pm - So TrekMovie.com Is Taking a Poll...

TrekMovie.com is taking a poll. Unfortunately, none of the choices reflect answers I would give. So I sent them an e-mail.

Not that I expect it to do a damn bit of good, even if the screenwriters of the most recent movie occasionally read the site and used its forums to defend their choices.[*] But as I said yesterday in another context, I'm sometimes a Don Quixote without a Sancho Panza and I couldn't stay silent anymore. I'm so frustrated by this awful movie....

You're conducting a poll right now as to what fans want in the next Star Trek film.

I want my Star Trek back. I want my Kirk who almost married Carol Marcus. I want my Kirk who advanced through the ranks in a normal, albeit quickened progression, and who was promoted to Captain after learning the responsibilities of being an officer by rising through the ranks. I want my Spock who did the same. I want my Kirk who was a "stack of books on legs" in whose class you "either think or sink" because he saw the importance of learning, not one who started bar fights with four other men simultaneously while trying to pick up a woman. I want my Kirk who didn't believe in the no-win scenario as a matter of how he lived his life, not a smart-ass eating an apple. I want planet Vulcan back, the intellectual light of the Federation. I want back a Star Trek written and produced by men who actually served in a real military and understand how it functions and its role in a democratic republic, not by men who did nothing but go to film school and have no idea of what the military virtues are or why men and women hold to them so strongly.

I want an Engineering Deck designed to be the engineering deck of a faster-than-light vehicle, not a dressed-up brewery floor with the same steel I-beams supporting the ceiling as in the basement of my century-old brick house!

I want a re-reboot, back to what Star Trek was intended to be, not this overly flashy, badly written imitation put together by people without a clue as to its original creators' intentions.

Current Mood: frustrated

07:19 pm - "Liberal Loathing" -- Conservative Service?

A guy named Del Riley publishes a weblog called Liberal Loathing. In an entry called "Good Riddance, Ted Kennedy!", he writes, in part:

"I guess he's even getting buried in Arlington alongside many of our fine men and women who, unlike Ted, actually gave the ultimate sacrifice for their country."

"All military veterans with Honorable Service are entitled to burial in Arlington, or Jefferson Barracks (where my Marine father's bones lie), or another national cemetary, whether they died in combat or whether they died of a heart attack 35 years after discharge as my dad did. Have you honorably served in uniform yourself and earned your own place in Arlington or elsewhere?

"I ask because, for all his flaws, Mr. Kennedy served in the Army from 1951-53, was Honorably discharged with the rank of Private First Class, and regardless of how much you dislike it had earned and was legally and morally entitled to an Arlington burial even if he'd never done anything of public note again, good or bad.

"So, have you earned the same?"

Current Mood: curious